One of our featured DAM vendors, Picturepark, are running some DAM webinars where they assess the relative benefits of Cloud (or SaaS) hosting as opposed to on-premise (or internal hosting). The events are being held at 9am PT on Wednesday 27th June:

“Do you know the truth about Cloud (SaaS) vs. onsite DAM? Which is more secure? Which is more affordable in the long run? Which option is best for your organization? Join Lincoln Howell (Belden), Heath Norton (Northern Arizona University), and “DAM Survival Guide” author and Picturepark Marketing Director David Diamond as they outline the best and worst of Cloud and onsite DAM deployment. ” [Read More]

The internal vs outsourced hosting discussion has been a hot topic in Digital Asset Management for several years now, which many of the reasons for going one way or another depending on the sensitivity of the material being held inside a DAM system. This paper from Daydream which we discussed last year also covers the same subject for anyone seeking information about which way to go.

In my experience, you tend to get a more balanced picture from vendors that can support either hosting option than from those who want you to go one way or another. Even those that will let you host your own tend to have preference for keeping it on their environment, however, because it’s generally less hassle for them (and therefore cheaper to deliver). I have always advised clients to ask for some reduction in support costs if you’re buying both hosting and support from the same provider to reflect the lower expenditure incurred by the vendor.

A further option that isn’t often discussed is taking a self-hosted route but then getting consultants or your own IT department to set it up with a Cloud hosting provider (like Amazon, RackSpace, Microsoft etc). This way you get the benefits of Cloud scalability but full control of the environment still and transparency about exactly what the vendor is doing and if they really are doing backups, using secure passwords etc. This seems to be an increasingly popular choice among the end users I talk to.